The Lateness Of The Hour
by ArmieJude
Summary: Four brothers have separated over time, their relationships have numbed. Their past lays behind them, a dead mother, an overbearing father. But wounds linger just beneath the surface, threatening to reach the surface. Armitage Hux, Clan Techie, Thomas McGregor, Stensland, and Kylux adjacent ships. Past Kylo/Hux. Modern AU


An inspecting finger races across glass, paying special attention to avoid its corners. The paint flaked now, a cheap sentimentality pretending to be wealthy. Armitage sighs; he's sighed often lately. Nostalgia aged him by decades, no one groans this much at 30.

"Tired?" Teddy leans against the couch, the same one that sat there in mourning when their mother died, cradling them both, head on shoulder, hand in hand. Too big now, to sit together on it. To fit.

Another sigh. "Is that a question at this point? Or an observation?"

"That depends-"

"On my mindset, yes, I know. I have no need to have Father haunt me from beyond the grave, please and thank you." The man didn't need resurrecting, a rotten patriarch deserved the fate his coffin fell into. Armitage couldn't think of a man more suited to disappearing from his life. Or...

Perhaps he could.

Muted steps permeate the dead air, kicking up dust undisturbed for years. Thomas, ever the responsible sibling, used to scour this house from plaster to board. Surely he's doing that in his quaint little cottage, surrounded by filth. Just as well. Weeds found solace in the back garden more than he ever did.

A long strand of red hair falls over one shoulder. Armie scoots over from his recline on the grand piano, Teddy slotting himself between its oak bench and scratched keys to peer at each oil frame resting atop it. A ruddy grandfather, in full regalia, scowling at them both, a thin reed of a grandmother in her Sunday whites, and then, a modern picture, a dark-haired teen with too many moles, too large ears, and a swollen-seeming mouth pressed into a pout. Angered, it seemed, by the permanently stodgy stares of the other images.

"I'm shocked Daddy kept this all this time," Teddy remarks on the third portrait, his wrinkled mourning suit strange on his skinny shoulders, "He must've never gone through the rubbish in the study."

Armie's freckled face sours immediately. "I'm more shocked a grown man calls his father 'Daddy'." That was neither here nor there, Teddy had called Brendol that pet name, much to his elder brother's distaste, since birth.

"Why? He's always been Daddy to-"

"You know why. I'm not having this argument, it's always ended the same way."

He can just make out the silver ball pierced into his brother's tongue as he clicks it. "Fine. Be boring now, if you want," Teddy's nails pick through his teeth, tasting his words out. "Hm, I guess... you've been boring since..." Identical blue eyes flick toward the glass in his hand in acknowledgment, before a sparkle of understanding sets Armie's internal danger alarm roaring. No one did more damage with emotional information than this man, or even tried to. Teddy couldn't spell the word 'decency' if it was read out to him letter by letter. "Godddd. Was the dick even that go-"

"If you don't shut your mouth, I'm going to gut you like a fucking fish!" He snarls, unable to cap the overflowing well of anger that he'd both inherited and stolen from his father. From **their** father. It didn't matter if Brendol didn't want a thing to do with him, Armitage still ended up residing in his decrepit shadow. Even at his funeral.

He can see the shock in Teddy's eyes, like the film of oil on a dead fish's lens, clouding something sharp before he, unlike Armie himself, managed to swallow the response and pack it away for later. For blackmail, presumably. "Why?"

The question, layers upon layers of prying barbs coating that one syllable, aches. As it should. If there was anything he and his siblings managed perfectly, it was sticking needles in exposed nerves. There's a reason Thomas doesn't come visit him anymore, a reason Teddy didn't bother answering the Christmas invitations, a reason Stensland moved to god-knows-where; a reason for everything, callous aggravation of those closest.

Armitage flicks his eyes toward the ground. The carpet beneath him remains dingy, dusty, the soft cornflower blue patterning falling into disrepair even before his father finally keeled over from his pneumonia spiral. However, there's no time to rest in this endless pause- though he could, if he wished, Teddy often gives up when left with no response- so the slight edge of his soft jaw eases around a syllable. He chews on it for a minute, as he does the tip of his tongue, as he did once before his braces got removed.

He sighs, aging by the minute, until he may crumble into ash on his childhood carpet. "He… He's gone. Leave him alone." It's a limp response, a hypocritical one at best considering his previously-expressed distaste for his father's passing. The underlying groan resting under his breath warns that this train of thought shouldn't be traveled further than this chasm.

The haze in Teddy's eyes darken to navy, wild and soothed simultaneously by what's been revealed to him, swallowing up context like an occasionally-benevolent black hole. "Did they know? Tommy never said-"

"No. They didn't."

A draft of humid air slides through the hallway, and Armitage's sensitive ears perked toward the creak of intruding air on brittle china. Brendol's private funeral started at dawn, as directly stated by the Hux patriarch through his will; a glazed wooden coffin to rest in, a bouquet of white roses (his mother's treasured flower, reminiscent of her scent) and a space in the back garden to be buried. No visitors, no mourning, nothing to precede or end that dingy ceremony but two sweating sons. Two wordless bodies groaning after pushing an overweight deadman across grassy knots toward his grave. It suited Brendol Hux to die alone, just as he had lived, with only two of his four sons present as half-weary tributes.

No one should be here. No one should have come home to this. Not a tear should be spilled, and yet, as Armitage stalks warily from the carpeted piano room to the front door, he's greeted with a sodden ghost. Empty air. No one. Two parallel lines of scruffy hedges, now taller than Armie, guide his eyes back toward that same blasted gate his father never repaired; it swung aimlessly against mounting air currents. No mention of inclement weather in this area, not from the paltry local forecast he tuned into from his hotel room. Hux swears momentarily, one belated 'fuck' hardly louder than the wind. No one paid the slightest inch of attention to surroundings, to logical repairs, and so this house deserved it, he decides, in misguided ire, his family home and everyone who lived in it deserved to… to hurt.

Was he supposed to mourn? Wasn't he? He finds his hands running up and down the axis of that same lock that finally snapped open, giving up and letting the wooden and glass barrier swing between a dead man's house and incoming clouds blowing into the garden. Teddy had the tact to shed a few belated tears as they piled dirt over his shoddy grave. Indistinguishable from sweat, perhaps, but everpresent. A son lamenting their father's inevitable-yet-untimely death, properly. Silent as a ghost, Armie thinks, always so quiet. Always appearing right where he needed to be without notice.

"That lock always looked dodgy." It's easy to forget that their minds weren't connected directly; perhaps that remained for the best. Teddy and his milky-soft voice, hardened by time, dulled by revelations but also unspoken tragedy… it would be for the best. Armitage held no place in his body capable of storing tears, no matter how warm they fell on his shoulder, on his cheek. Who would know who spoke, then? Had it been him, or someone else? An unholy fusion of duplicates, speaking separately with one voice. Gooseflesh rises on his back at the thought, cold nails on his spine.

Teddy shoulders his way between him and the door, two bodies cramped into one doorway to behold scattering drops clattering on the walkway. Petrichor scents the air as it slithers past the front steps. "It should've been repaired years ago," Armitage answers, half-cognizant of the man next to him. Frog song mingled with gutter clatter, an overwhelming concerto that seemed to pry his soul from his body, unraveling it outward, past the hedges, the mailbox, the gate, to somewhere frigid.

"Yes. It should have... " There's an unspoken layer there, another implication piled between a soft 's' and breathy 'h', waiting to be discovered. Armie holds no patience for double meanings, not now. Everything could be buried, fossilized into one phrase, but he had wasted all his fervor for digging after this morning. His shoulders crumple in surrender, nearly as fast as Teddy's suit jacket hitting the ground as he rips it off of him. His brother's never had the patience for heavy linens, not if the combined six hours of wailing over yearly family pictures communicated anything to him. Ironic, given his profession. Hux raises a tired eyebrow at him, before inevitably gathering up the jacket to at least rest on the coat rack. "Dare I ask what you're doing?"

"Dare you?" That smile is going to get his teeth knocked out, he swears- "Easy there. Don't get too stressed out, you'll vomit on your nice shoes. Again." The insolent little twat that Armitage has to call a sibling lays out on his back just beyond the porch overhang, lounging even. No one matched a cheshire cat grin more, it suited no one better. He'd retort that vomit-soaked shoes could be thrown, save for the fact that a verbal argument with a sibling never went anywhere but hell or, at the very least, purgatory.

Instead, Armie attempts to ease the heavy door shut, despite the wind tugging at his lapels and the unwieldy screech of the door hinges at every inch. It's uncooperative, because of course it fucking is, nothing that stuck around past his childhood ever did what it was fucking supposed to. His hands aren't made for physical labor, not with his pathetic grip strength matched with uncalloused pads. Aristocratic, maybe, but never helpful.

He gives up quickly; the lock kept the entire door in place, some byzantine contraption of pins and locking mechanisms installed before even Thomas had been conceived, and just as prone to unnecessary stubborness as the man who demanded it be built that way. Brendol Michael Hux proclaimed himself master of many things, yet functional architecture never fell in his wheelhouse. For a supposed master of trades, he ruined everything he touched or decided upon. Armitage's eyes flutter closed for a moment; enough.

That's enough. Pacing over his father's ineptitudes did nothing, just as obsessing over spirits did little to return them to his side. He knows. He's tried. There are too many specters lost to time to truly feel ambivalence over. He decides then and there that his father would not be one to join his cavalcade of death. Brendol should be the lone man lost to time, indefinitely. An eternity of death would not be enough. He hopes his assumptions on religion wrong, for once in his life. He would suffer loss of many varieties to observe that man writhe in Hell. That's enough. Pacing over his father's ineptitudes did nothing, just as obsessing over spirits did little to return them to his side. He knows. He's tried. There are too many specters lost to time to truly feel ambivalence over. He decides then and there that his father would not be one to join his cavalcade of death. Brendol should be the lone man lost to time, indefinitely. An eternity of death would not be enough. He hopes his assumptions on religion wrong, for once in his life. He would suffer loss of many varieties to observe that man writhe in Hell.

Rain continues to splatter on, pooling in the center of Teddy's own closed lids, just as Armie opens his. Dew clings to pale eyelashes, dress shirt to skin. He focuses halfway on that mouth when it parts, eventually, "If the door's broken, leave it open. No one's living here anymore, I think it would be nice if the place got taken over by the outside. I hope the house fucking rots."

Hux blinks. When did his twin become so vindictive? Theodore Hux, whose eyes bubbled at the sight of a wilted flower, wishing to water it with tears. A boy who hugged his elder brother's leg until Thomas allowed him to kiss the bandage he'd applied to his own knee… What had happened? He can't help but gravitate toward the soaking body flung over the grass, his own suit jacket and silk tie left beneath the safety of the porch. The red-tufted flower below him, underneath his standing gaze appeared to have wilted, hardened into something else. Rain traversed up and down his ribcage, highlighting each painfully obvious bone. Teddy could exist only as purely innocent or purely deceitful, it seemed, and, peering down from above to observe him, like an errant god, Armitage can no longer determine which supposition could be true. Troubling. There's always trouble when one couldn't immediately find the answer. "... You need a haircut," is all he can muster, the biting commentary flitting across his upper lip, his tongue, released into the air silently with his exhalation. A sigh, another one, always another.

And truthfully he did- no matter how much money his makeup team poured into tending to his sibling, Teddy always managed to look ragged, in need of a haircut, a shave, or a long rest, in no particular order. It's only then that their eyes catch a minute, red-rimmed, overblown blue and resigned, uncommunicative crystal, bouncing ideas off of one another as light pours through glass, leaving residual heat behind. His younger brother, by but a moment, smiles, clearly undeterred by the fussing as his bony fingers reach up, offering him a hand to take.

He does. They've done this many times before.

The gel's grip in his hair loosens as Armie sits himself down cross-legged on the grass, freeing his hair to fall about his face in the howling winds of a blackened sky. Teddy does not let go; neither will he. It is how it must be done, how it always has been done. Shared affection must be willed into being rather than shared casually. Armitage runs the flat of his thumb over their knuckles, startled for a moment as lightning clatters a few miles beyond but resuming pace soon after. He can't bear to let this go, he realizes, without a change in his neutral expression, he won't dare release him first. Both of Armie's hands scoop up their locked embrace, pulling it close to his face so his nose could bury into their hold, eyes shut tight. When… when was the last time… he'd been touched? Someone had held his hand?

He can't recall.

No, he can, he… most certainly can. His shoulders tremble from anything but cold, at the thought. Of reviving something left to disrepair. Of picking up the pieces from one of the thousand glass memories Armie threw to the ground in an attempt to forget. Too many regrets to preserve them, to continue to look back on them with nostalgic judgment. He can't… he won't recall.

A stray drop slides down his cheek, oddly salty for rain when it meets his lip. It was from the gel, certainly. Definitely. Indisputably.

"I'm sorry…" Though Teddy speaks first, the sentiment resonates through him from his fingertips to his toes, what he could have said. 'I'm sorry'. The frustrated teenage boy, preserved in glass on a piano built to crumble, would never hear it. Could never. His throat croaks, full of unwanted sounds, before going silent again.

There was no use apologizing to dead boys. They weren't very good at listening.


End file.
